Petunia's Trials
by Doneril
Summary: What if the Evans are more than they seem? What if Petunia dreams of magic and Lily is the logical one? Chronicle of Petunia's loss of belief in essential good. Three Parts
1. Petunia's Loss

Another ficlet from your favorite would-be-world-dictator! Yay! Ok, just read and review, ok? I don't think that I'll continue, but if I get lots of reviews I will. Maybe Petunia's evolution into the evil little.. woman she is. Enjoy!  
  
*  
  
"Lily, Petunia," Sonya Evans called up the stairs. "Come down to the den. Your father and I need to talk to you!"  
  
Lily and Petunia, only two years apart in age and inseparable best friends since they were in diapers, came tumbling down the stairwell. Neither worried that they would be in trouble; they were generally good kids and when they weren't, well, they watched each other's backs. When they reached the den, the sisters quickly arranged themselves on the couch in front of their parents, Michael and Sonya Evans.  
  
Michael smiled lovingly at his two daughters, knowing that it would be hard to break this news to the girls. "This is really important, but you can't talk to anyone outside of this house about it. It has to be a secret. Do you promise?"  
  
The girls nodded mutely. They had never seen their father so serious before.  
  
He sighed. "Your mother and I are a witch and wizard."  
  
The girls were confused. "You mean, like that Wicca stuff I saw in the bookstore once?" queried Petunia who was a voracious reader.  
  
"No," replied Sonya. "We mean real magic. We were both educated at a school called Hogwarts a long time ago."  
  
Lily, ever the logical one, laughed. "That's impossible! There's no such thing as magic!"  
  
"There is too!" Petunia argued back. "I read about it in books! Oh, I've always dreamed about something like this! I just knew magic was real!"  
  
"Oh, it is not," Lily replied huffily. "You just read stupid fantasy books. Real books, like ones for school, don't talk about magic! It's silly. Magic isn't real!"  
  
"What about the mythologies?" Petunia snapped. "You were complaining about having to read about those Roman gods for your Latin class the other day. That's magic! And you have to read about it for school!"  
  
"Yeah, but we don't believe in that stuff! Its just what a bunch of silly people thought a long time ago!"  
  
"Girls," Sonya cut in warningly. She did not want this to break out into a full-scale argument. "Petunia is right. There is real magic."  
  
Lily turned her unbelieving green eyes to face her parents. "Really? Then why haven't we ever seen you use it?"  
  
"We went into hiding only a few years after our marriage," Michael explained. "We were quite powerful and an evil wizard wanted us to join him. We couldn't help him, but. bad things would happen to us if we didn't. We did the only thing we could. We stopped using magic and went into hiding as Muggles. A dear friend even faked our deaths for us. Just to be safe, we changed our names."  
  
"What's a Muggle?"  
  
Sonya grinned at Petunia's eternal curiosity. "A Muggle is a non-magical person. It is a common term in the Wizarding world."  
  
"There's an entire Wizarding world?" Lily gasped.  
  
"Yep," Michael replied.  
  
"How could we not have heard of this?!"  
  
"The Wizarding world keeps itself secret from Muggles. Sometimes they will watch out for Muggle safety. Like when this Dark wizard was gaining power, many wizards took it upon themselves to protect the Muggles who lived near them. But we lost contact with anyone in the Wizarding world when we went into hiding. We can only assume that the Dark wizard - Grindewald - was defeated."  
  
"But," Petunia asked in confusion, "why are you telling us this? If we've lost contact with the wizards and we can't talk to anyone about this, why should we know?"  
  
"Next week is Lily's eleventh birthday. Traditionally, Hogwarts sends out their letters on the recipient's eleventh birthday. Since both your father and I are magical, you two probably are, too. When you go to Hogwarts, you have to act as if you came from a Muggle family. Some may tease you for not coming from a Wizarding family, but under no circumstances can you tell them about us. It would be too dangerous."  
  
Petunia and Lily nodded. "Do you have wands, like the witches in my books?"  
  
"Of course!"  
  
"What do they look like?"  
  
"Well, mine is disguised as a potato peeler, and your father's is a wrench in his tool box. Do you want to see what they really look like?"  
  
"Yeah!" the sisters chorused.  
  
_  
  
Two years later, Petunia woke up on her eleventh birthday, hoping and praying and expecting a letter from Hogwarts. Lily was always telling stories about her classes and her friends and the prankster boys in her House. Even though Lily complained, Petunia thought the boys sounded nice. Immature and stupid, but nice all the same. She couldn't wait to go to Hogwarts.  
  
She had borrowed Lily's first-year books and read them all from cover to cover. She even insisted that Lily buy her regular wizard books, just so that she would know what the other students were interested in. By now, she understood Quidditch, Potions, a few Charms, and eagerly anticipated Transfiguration. Petunia was sure she would be good at magic. She had to be. Lily was. Her parents were. Why wouldn't she be?  
  
Yet, the weeks dragged on and no letters arrived. Her parents and Lily would cast her odd looks at the dinner table and have whispered conversations Petunia didn't understand. The word "Squib" was passed about frequently, but they sounded disgusted when they said it. They couldn't be talking about her like that? No, they were her family. They loved her.  
  
Finally, one day at the end of August, her family gave up on Hogwarts and broke the news to her. Petunia was a Squib. Inwardly, Petunia cringed when she saw the way her father's lip curled at the mention of the word. She became angry at Lily's well-meaning pity. But what hurt her most was that her mother, Sonya, refused to talk about it. Sonya would not allow Petunia to speak of magic in her presence anymore. She told Petunia that she was a Muggle and, by God, she would act like one. At night, Petunia would stay up late and read her favorite books, the ones where the heroines were whisked off to a happily ever after on the back of a unicorn.  
  
The one thing she never did was cry. Crying wouldn't help anything, she thought. Lily wouldn't cry. Lily would deal with it and get on with her life. She had lived her whole life without magic. She could live the rest of it without magic, too.  
  
The day Lily left for Hogwarts, Petunia burned her books. If magic could give up on her, she could give up on magic. 


	2. Petunia's Pain

This took a long time coming, but the angst needed to be there.  
  
*  
  
She stared at the mist that curled around the train station teasing her, teasing the mundane one, teasing the one who had dared to dream. Had dared, she thought bitterly. Of course, she still adored her sister and lapped up stories of Lily's magic world like cream. But it was poisoned cream. After the holiday's end, Petunia would lay awake in her dorm, tears silently streaming down her cheeks, thinking of all the things her sister took for granted and that she could never have.  
  
Enough self-inflicted pain! She thought sharply to herself. Lily was coming home and Lily did not pity her. Her parents felt sorry for her and her severe lack of magical talents, but Lily knew she was the same Petunia she had always been. Anyway, Lily was bringing friends home for Christmas and the New Year: her boyfriend, James Potter, and his best friend, Sirius Black. Lily warned her, by owl, that they loved pranks a bit overmuch and were not used to living like Muggles. Petunia didn't care; she loved all things magical and if they were magical boys - well, all the better, in her opinion. This Christmas - only two days away - would be wonderful. Lily would be home and, with the boys around the house, her parents couldn't ignore her or pointedly leave her out of magical conversations.  
  
Petunia held her breath as the scarlet train entered the station. Then she was promptly knocked over by a pink-cheeked red head.  
  
"Petunia!" Lily cried. "I missed you! Wait until you see the boys!" Lily released her sister from the bone-crushing hug and spun around to find James and Sirius. "James! Black! Over here!"  
  
Petunia blushed slightly; Lily was making a scene, again. Then she caught sight of the two boys ambling over and blushed for a different reason. She wondered which one was James and started to fix her hair, as fifteen-year- old girls are wont to do when they come in contact with older boys. The answer to her question - which one is James - was quickly answered when Lily delivered another bone crushing hug, this time to the short boy with tousled hair. That left the longhaired boy to be Sirius.  
  
Petunia smiled shyly at Sirius while they watched James struggled out of Lily's hug. He offered her his hand and introduced himself. Petunia giggled and smiled. Sirius thought she looked a bit touched, but didn't want to say anything to get him kicked out of the house before he arrived. It was either Christmas with the Evans or Christmas with the Blacks and even Muggles were preferable to his family reunions.  
  
The whole car ride back to the Evans home in Surrey, Petunia made eyes at Sirius, but he was too busy talking to James and Lily to notice. They were talking about things that she didn't understand anyway - animagi, an Order of some kind, a battle, and a phoenix. Well, at least she knew what a phoenix was. Sure, she had burned most of her well-loved books when she was eleven, but she had read them so many times she could still recite some passages from memory. Too bad no one was interested.  
  
At dinner that night Michael and Sonya quizzed the seventh years on their classes and teachers. They were careful to reveal no extra knowledge of magic. No one could even know that they weren't Muggles. Of course, this made James and Sirius quite comfortable in telling them absolutely everything they were learning - Lily's parents wouldn't even know what they were talking about!  
  
Petunia sighed from the door of Lily's bedroom as she watched the boys get ready for bed in hers. She really didn't mind sharing a room with Lily over the holidays. She still idolized her older sister and sharing a room meant that Sirius Black was in the house.  
  
"I hope you're not standing there planning to steal my boyfriend, sis," Lily laughed.  
  
Petunia spun around and flopped onto the spare bed. "No, I was looking at his friend."  
  
"You have to be kidding me!" her sister exclaimed. "Sirius Black? He is the most ill mannered, self-absorbed, egotistical-"  
  
"Hottest guy on the planet," Petunia finished.  
  
"Ew!"  
  
"Not that'd he even go for me - I'm a Squib, remember?"  
  
"Oh, Sear doesn't know that! And Muggle-magic relationships aren't entirely uncommon," Lily replied, not daring to tell her Sirius' family views on Muggles.  
  
"Really?"  
  
"Really." Lily sincerely hoped that this was just a passing crush and that Petunia would be over Sirius before the holidays ended. Sirius had never been on Petunia's end of unrequited love.  
  
On Christmas Day, after all of the presents were opened and Christmas dinner was finished, Petunia and Lily had some old Muggle friends come over to the house for a party. They played some music, danced, and had a general good time. At first James and Sirius were hesitant to take part in the festivities, but, as the night wore on, they soon became the life of the party.  
  
Around eleven, one of Petunia's friends, a girl named Eliza, caught Petunia and Sirius standing under the mistletoe together. "Ooh!" she squealed. "You two have to kiss now!"  
  
Sirius looked a bit confused by Eliza but complied with tradition. Petunia thought she never wanted to be kissed by anyone else in her entire life. Lily frowned; this was not good, it would only prolong her sister's crush.  
  
Later that night, when heading for bed, Petunia passed the boys' bedroom and heard them talking.  
  
James was laughing.  
  
"Hey, stop that!"  
  
James continued laughing and it sounded like Sirius punched him.  
  
"What was that for?"  
  
"You were laughing at me!"  
  
"You kissed Lily's sister!"  
  
"Yeah, so? We had to comply with tradition."  
  
"She's been mooning over you since she first saw us at Platform 9 ¾."  
  
"She has?"  
  
"It's been rather obvious."  
  
"I don't see where the point is."  
  
"She likes you, you git!"  
  
"So?"  
  
"What are you going to do about it?"  
  
"Nothing."  
  
"Come on, Sear, you have to do something."  
  
"No, Jamie-boy, I don't. Can you imagine what would happen if I ever, ever showed up anywhere with a Muggle like that?"  
  
"Point taken."  
  
Petunia gasped and ran into Lily's room, only to dive onto her bed. She was "a Muggle like that" to Sirius?  
  
Lily looked up from the book she was reading. "Petunia? What wrong?"  
  
Petunia threw her pillow at her sister, who caught it with one hand. "Go away."  
  
"Pet? What's wrong?"  
  
"Go away."  
  
"Is it Sear?"  
  
Petunia nodded.  
  
"What happened?"  
  
"I head him talking to James and he said he could never be seen with a Muggle like me."  
  
"Oh, Pet, don't be upset."  
  
"Why shouldn't I be?"  
  
"The situation's beyond Sirius' control. He can't afford to be seen with a Muggle - any Muggle, not just you."  
  
"And I suppose a witch would be just fine?"  
  
"Pet, don't say it like that."  
  
"Why not? Its true, isn't it?"  
  
"Well, yeah."  
  
"Why?"  
  
"It beyond his control. His family - they follow You-Know-Who and-"  
  
"No, I don't know who and what does his family matter if he doesn't live with them?"  
  
"It isn't like that! He wouldn't be safe! His own family would abandon him!"  
  
"Like he hasn't abandoned them."  
  
"Pet, You-Know-Who is gaining power and Sear's family is all Dark. And-"  
  
"No, I don't know who and I don't understand your world, Lils! I guess its like Mum and Dad say - I don't belong in anyone's world!"  
  
"They do not say that!"  
  
"Not to me maybe, but to each other. If I'm not welcome in this house or any of your lives, I may as well leave now!"  
  
"Pet!" Lily cried as her sister stomped out of the room.  
  
The rest of the holidays were tense and stressful for both Lily and Petunia. When Lily and the boys left for Hogwarts, Petunia stayed home to pack. She refused to say good-bye to the others and quietly left for school with her friends. The magical world had abandoned her once more. First it stole her family. Now it stole her heart. What more could it ask for?  
  
* What do you think? Does it measure up to the last chapter?  
  
I'm thinking about adding a third chapter to wrap things up, but will only do so if I receive actual reviews.  
  
If you want something to happen - evil something - to Petunia, tell me and I might be able to fit everything in!  
  
Your favorite world dictator and tyrannical fanwriter, Doneril 


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